Pope: No Legalizing Drugs

Pope Francis celebrates a mass outside St. John at the Lateran Basilica to mark the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, in Rome, Thursday, June 19, 2014. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

(Newser)
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Pope Francis condemned the legalization of recreational drugs as a flawed and failed experiment today, lending his voice to a debate which is raging from the US to Uruguay and beyond. Francis told delegates to a drug-enforcement conference in Rome that even limited attempts to legalize recreational drugs "are not only highly questionable from a legislative standpoint, but they fail to produce the desired effects." Likewise, providing addicts with drugs doesn't solve the problem and is "rather a veiled means of surrendering to the phenomenon," he said.

"Let me state this in the clearest terms possible: the problem of drug use is not solved with drugs!" he said. Francis has frequently railed against the "evil" of drug addiction, and his speech today stuck close to that theme: CNN reports that he said, "Drug addiction is an evil, and with evil there can be no yielding or compromise." Francis has met with addicts on several occasions, and when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires, he similarly devoted much of his pastoral care to addicts. Just last month, Uruguay—next door to Francis' native Argentina—approved selling marijuana cigarettes in pharmacies. (Read more Pope Francis stories.)